The Archaeology of Clothing in the Ancient Near East



The Archaeology of Clothing in the Ancient Near EastBy Allison Thomason?The ancient Near East was the area of the world where sheep were first domesticated and their wool used in textiles, and where flax plants were first cultivated and their fibers used for threads. It is therefore arguably the most important place to study the history of clothing. Textiles were worn by humans on their bodies, but clothing was only one of many choices in the broader sense of “dress,” a term that includes other forms of adornment and body alteration, such as jewelry, and even perfume, that archaeologists may study. In the ancient Near East most items of clothing were worn as ensembles—that is, in conjunction with other adornments and body-altering processes to create a complete bodily experience for wearers and the people with whom they came into contact, stimulating all of the senses including olfactory and auditory.Most of the archaeological material and representational evidence for clothing dates to the Bronze and Iron Ages, but there is some evidence related to clothing that is preserved as early as the Neolithic period. Despite this geographic and temporal range, the problem remains that unless a relatively large fragment from an easily identifiable section of clothing (e.g., a hemline) is excavated, it is difficult to affirm the use of any textile as an item of clothing. In other words, textile remains can come from many and any archaeological contexts, but securely identified examples of clothing worn on the body are relatively rare and primarily from mortuary contexts. Furthermore, most of these finds of textiles come from elite areas of sites – predominantly tombs and sometimes palaces – thus the use of archaeological remains to understand how non-elites wore clothing is limited.While there is less archaeological evidence relating to how non-elites wore their clothing, the situation is different regarding the production of textiles by craft workers and family members. Wool was the main type of material used to produce textiles and form clothing in the ancient Near East. Environmentally, many regions are excellent for sheep rearing, which was performed by pastoral nomads as well as rural and urban inhabitants.Sheep herd near Revivim, Israel. (Wikimedia Commons/M. Baranovsky)Wool’s uniquely sustainable and inexpensive production rendered it an ideal material for the production of textiles as trade exports. In addition, the chemical and organic abilities of wool to resist water penetration, to retain heat or breathe for coolness, to accept colors and dyes, and to be spun into variable widths and weights of thread made it an obvious choice for clothing.Wool can require carding and combing, either before spinning or even once a textile is finished, and these and other finishing or weaving techniques result in various qualities of softness, flexibility, weight, and uniformity. Textile quality is often noted in ancient texts, reflecting human choices and awareness of demand for finished products. Typically the finest quality woolen textiles were reserved for clothing elites and royal figures as well as statues of the gods in the polytheistic Near Eastern societies.The other major type of cloth, linen woven from flax threads, was considered a more luxurious material outside of Egypt and the southern Levant. Flax thread is made from the fibers of the plant, which requires a great deal of agricultural attention, such as steady watering and harvesting, and preparation work, including rhetting (separating the fibers through soaking in water), beating, and combing to render it soft and flexible. The vast majority of flax thread and linen in the ancient Near East would have been imported as luxury or prestige commodities and finished products through trade, tribute or even plunder from Egypt or the Levant. Cotton and silk were generally not known in the ancient Near East until Classical periods or later.Almost all woolen and linen textiles in the ancient Near East were woven on looms, including the horizontal ground loom (especially prevalent in Egypt), the two-beam loom, and the warp-weighted vertical loom.Drawing of a warp-weighted loom from Arslan Tepe, Turkey. (M. Frangipane, et. al Paléorient 35/1, 2009, fig. 5)Textile production occurred in institutions and in small households. Evidence from a variety of textual sources indicates that the producers were typically female who left behind in houses, workshops, or in graves many objects related to production. These artifacts were made of ceramic, terracotta, or stone, and included spindles and whorls for forming and collecting thread, and combs for thread and fabric. A woven textile involves the “background” warp strings, arranged in parallel, which are then criss-crossed by passing a shuttle with the weft strings attached through them in various patterns and configurations. An array of different sizes and shapes of spindle whorls, and thousands of loom weights used in warp-weighted vertical looms, where gravity pulled down the warp strings tied with weights, have been excavated from archaeological sites, such as at Arslan Tepe in Turkey. Textile producers also used needles made out of more durable materials such as stone, bone or ivory, or metals.Loom weights from Arslan Tepe, Turkey. (Arslan Tepe blog by R. Laurito and G. Palumbi, 2017: Fig. 9A)Outside of Egypt, the preservation of organic remains such as textiles and wooden tools or loom beams is spotty in the archaeological record. While earlier excavation records attest to thousands of examples of such tangible traces of inorganic weaving tools, only recently have archaeological publications given space and attention to these often numerous and sometimes monotonous-looking objects. In addition, new awareness and techniques have allowed archaeologists to search for woven textile imprints (called pseudomorphs or?cretulae) in excavation strata, which can yield information about contexts of production and consumption of clothing.Cretulae with textile impressions from Arslan Tepe. (Arslan Tepe blog by R. Laurito and G. Palumbi, 2017: Fig. 10)The study of clothing in the ancient Near East has recently focused on textiles as material culture, situating the production of clothing within the larger processes of state formation, economic materialism, and socio-political complexity. Many studies focus on textual discussions of textile workers and products as well as the production processes. In addition, clothing has been studied recently as communicative behavior linked to identity creation, performance and practice. The choice of clothing is both conditioned by and formative of gender, status, power, ethnic, and other identities. In the new turn towards understanding the relationship between clothing and the individual and their body, clothing is a verb, not a noun, which allows individuals to act in embodied ways as agents making unacknowledged or active sartorial choices in response to their surroundings.Excavated materials from elite burials of the Bronze and Iron Ages, such as the hypogeum tombs at Qatna (ca. 1600-1200 BCE) and the tombs of Neo-Assyrian queens at Nimrud (ca. 900-750 BCE), contained textiles wrapped around bodies. From the royal palace at Qatna, white textiles with murex-dyed purple meander patterns were incorporated into the burials. Royals were also accompanied in death by textiles decorated with thousands of small gold beads attached, along with other forms of dress such as jewelry and headdresses made of gold and semi-precious stones. A single finely-woven and polished linen tassel as well as chunks of layered linen cloth were also found in the Nimrud tombs. The dangling and flexible items of jewelry, and hanging gold beads and tassels in the Nimrud tombs demonstrate that elites preferred clothing made with components that dazzled the senses and which would flash and jingle as they moved. Such clothing was “high-maintenance” and required the wearer to make multiple adjustments in posture and wrapping to properly comport themselves. Throughout the ancient Near East, such attention-grabbing ensembles donned for important events are discussed in texts and represented in images on different types of objects, from the portable to the monumental.Relief showing Neo-Assyrian queen in Ashurbanipal’s Garden, North Palace, Nineveh. (? Trustees of the British Museum)Our understanding of the archaeology of clothing in the ancient Near East is certainly dominated by artifacts from elite contexts, however, the textiles found at the Iron Age site of Timna, a copper-smelting center near the Red Sea (dating eleventh to tenth centuries B.C.E.), force a rethinking. The discovery of wool textiles decorated with wide bands of red-purple and made with organic materials such as red madder and indigo in the context of a mineworkers’ settlement and a smelting site indicates that workers in the desert had access to luxury and prestige items as much as did elites in the urban centers of the Levant.What common factors emerge from these limited archaeological examples? First, when preserved, textiles most often come from mortuary contexts, and are part of larger burial assemblages or dress ensembles. A few fragments of textiles come from non-mortuary contexts, but they are often too poorly preserved to confirm any significant findings. While some textile fragments preserve decoration, dye, and finished edges or tassels, none can be identified for certain as anything more than a type of rectangular or amorphous sheet, shroud, or wrap. In other words, the poor preservation and fragmentary nature of the archaeological material prevents a certain identity of any clothing shaped and sewn to actually “fit” onto an individual body. “Ready-to-wear” garments are not accessible to us archaeologically.Overall, the archaeological accessibility of clothing in the ancient Near East can be categorized as at worst frustrating and at best tantalizing. Despite these frustrations, the new data-driven studies on weaving tools and technology, the increasing awareness of fabric imprints in excavations, and laboratory analyses of preserved textile remains offer promising new directions for the study of clothing in the ancient Near East.?Allison Thomason is a professor in the Department of History at the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.Further Reading:M. Cifarelli, ed.?Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity. Oxford, UK: Oxbow, 2019.M. Cifarelli and L. Gawlinksi, eds.?What Shall I Say of Clothes?: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2017.M. Frangipane, et. al. “Arslantepe, Malatya (Turkey): Textiles, Tools and Imprints of Fabrics from the 4th to the 2nd Millennium BCE.”?Paléorient?35/1 (2009): 5-29.A. Gansell. “Dressing the Neo-Assyrian Queen in Identity and Ideology: Elements and Ensembles from the Royal Tombs at Nimrud.”?American Journal of Archaeology?122 (2018): 65-100.H. Koefoed and M.-L. Nosch, eds.,?Textile Production and Consumption in the Ancient Near?East: Archaeology, Epigraphy, Iconography.?Ancient Textiles Series?8. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 2012.A. Thomason. “Clothing and Nudity in the Ancient Near East.” Pp. 87-126 in S. Schulz and C. Berner, eds.,?A Handbook to Clothing and Nudity in the Hebrew Bible. London: T&T Clark, 2019. ................
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